


Never Enough Names

by Kiarawolf



Series: bff/tinfcomic Fanfiction Bomb [2]
Category: Best Friends Forever (Webcomic), This Is Not Fiction (Webcomic)
Genre: Adoption, Gen, Pregnancy, Teen Pregnancy, bffcomic, implied depression, tinfcomic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 04:12:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4045453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiarawolf/pseuds/Kiarawolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Kamri started showing, it didn’t take long for Charlie and Bianca to draw away. Her friendship with Penelope, however, only grew stronger. <br/>Excerpt: Louis weaselled it out of her. He’d always been good at digging for her secrets, but not so good at keeping them. ‘You have to tell him,’ he insisted, and Kamri tired to explain why she wasn’t going to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Enough Names

**Author's Note:**

> Characters belong to Mickey Quinn / Landon belongs to Nicole Mannino  
> No profit is being made.

  When Kamri started showing, it didn’t take long for the other girls to draw away. Charlie and Bianca didn’t mean to do it, Kamri knew that, but all of a sudden she was a different person, and they didn’t know the first thing about her.

  The problem was, neither did she.

  After she’d finally taken those tests and wasted away the weekend eating ice-cream and watching re-runs of fashion week with Penelope, Kamri had dreaded coming to school. It wasn’t long until the rumours spread. And the moment they did, Vincent had led her under an arch and then stood there scratching the back of his neck, words failing him. And Kamri couldn’t help but compare the way he looked to the way he’d looked just that morning, accepting a strawberry frappe from Teddy with a hopeless, heart-eyed grin. Or the way he’d looked in the sneaky photo Louis had sent the night before, bare arse pale and muscled shoulders relaxed. ‘It’s not yours, if that’s what you’re wondering,’ she’d said, and when she walked away, she didn’t look back.

  Despite being younger, Penelope was more mature than her other friends. Kamri found she could complain about how much her back hurt without making Penelope uncomfortable. She could call Penelope in the middle of the night, crying about the fact that it was four months now and her period hadn’t arrived on the 11th like it usually did, and Penelope wouldn’t tell her that it was a silly wish, that of course she was pregnant look at those tests we did and look at your belly, look at the last three 11ths of each month, you didn’t get your period then, why would you now? No, Penelope just listened.

  Louis weaselled it out of her. He’d always been good at digging for her secrets, but not so good at keeping them. ‘You have to tell him,’ he insisted, and Kamri tired to explain why she wasn’t going to. Why Vincent’s morals would lead to marriage, why Vincent’s righteousness would lead to rows. She wouldn’t be able to resist his support, but she knew she would be much stronger without it. So she just wouldn’t give him the cause to offer it.

  It wasn’t like money was an issue. Kamri’s parents weren’t thrilled, of course, and they drove her up the wall, but they loved her, and their bank account was limitless.

  Penelope brought her a baby names book for a graduation present. They flicked through the pages together, laughing at the silly ones, until Kamri found that her laughs had turned to sobs. Penelope opened her arms, and held her there, warm and safe, all night.

‘I can’t do it,’ Kamri whispered into the dark at one point, ‘I can’t even choose a name, how am I supposed to – ’

‘You can do it, darling,’ Penelope mumbled, drowsy but awake. ‘But you don’t have to do it alone.’

  When the baby came, Kamri’s parents took shifts waking up in the middle of the night, changing diapers and soothing tantrums. Karmi lay in bed, sometimes asleep, sometimes staring at the roof, thinking about the small pink creature in the cot upstairs and wondering if it was even her baby at all.

‘What shall we call the little guy,’ her parents asked each other over breakfast, and names like Haden and Liam and Joah passed over her head only to be batted back.

‘I’m not naming him yet,’ Kamri told them, and they started at her, openly shocked. It was the first thing she’d said, since the birth.

  Penelope and her boyfriend Leo came round every couple of days, with toys and smiles and mostly-one-sided chats. When they offered for her to move in with them, Kamri thought maybe that was exactly what she needed. To get away from the controlling support of her parents. To actually give this thing a try, in her own way.

  Penelope’s room ended up being the only clean place in the house. Leo’s room was full of scraps of fabric and cups of paint-clouded water, and Kamri’s was full of prams and cots and dirty bibs. She only had one closet, but she lined her old party dresses up in there anyway, sorting them by colour and brushing the dust away every now and then.

‘Have you chosen a name yet, Kam,’ Leo asked her almost everyday, but she’d always shake her head.

‘There’s too many good ones, I can’t settle,’ she would answer. And then she’d spent the whole afternoon staring at her child, who’s straight red hair was starting to grow and who’s tiny little body was already showing signs of stretching, and wonder why she couldn’t think of a single name. Not even one.

  Penelope’s split with Leo had been a long time coming, Kamri thought. They loved each other, of course, and they’d tried to make it work. But Penelope was young, and thirsty for knowledge, and thinking about volunteer teaching in Africa, or fashion design in London. And Leo was earning a stable salary, and watching his high school friends taking their children to daycare, and spending hours playing with Kamri’s little one. When Kamri was having a bad day, it was Leo who took the baby for a stroll around the park, Leo who bathed the baby and fed the baby and changed the baby’s diaper.

  And it was Leo who offered to adopt the baby, when Karmi’s bad days turned into bad weeks. ‘I can’t do this,’ she’d told Penelope once, and the words had never left her brain.

‘You can, you can,’ Penelope said, and took her out shopping and dragged her to the movies and babysat while Kamri shook out an old dress and met Charli and Bianca out at a club.

  But when Leo came home with the nappy powder she’d forgot and took the squalling child from her arms, calming him with a few soothing coos, and said, ‘you know, I’ve been thinking that he looks like a Landon,’ Kamri knew that she couldn’t keep heading in this same direction.

‘I can’t even choose a name,’ Kamri told her parents as way of explanation, when they asked why she wanted to give the child away. ‘He never really felt like mine to name, to be honest. Landon suits him much better than The Baby.’

  Leo cried when she handed him the paper work. ‘I… I feel like this little guy is my second chance,’ he said. ‘I was in a similar situation to yours, you know. And I ran away and I’ve been too ashamed to go back. But now…’

‘How old were you,’ Kamri asked, curious.

‘Just 17. Me and my high school friends, we, uh, won a band competition… Things were pretty big for us, for a while. When I heard there was a girl claiming that I’d gotten her pregnant, well, I… all I can say is, musicians are arseholes. But I’m better now. Meeting Penny, getting into art… I’m ready now, I swear.’

__

  Kamri’s phone vibrated in the middle of the night. _One new message from Louis_ , the screen said. Drowsily, she swiped right.

_Congrats on 17 yrs in London!!! been 2 long. Oh, and don’t forget 2 send me a catalogue of ur+pennys latest show. Um. Really? u really want me 2 answer that? I suppose u do, or u wouldn’t ask. Yea, kid’s fine. Teddy sends him birthday cards. I keep an eye out. He’s struggling, troublesome, and wishing he knew who his mum is, but ok. He actually reminds me of his dad (yes, idiot’s still clueless. Been sum close calls thou). same hair (different color, duh), same build (well, if he played football it’d happen), the same tendency to fucking fall in <3 w. his little BFF._

  Kamri tired to cry, but only felt empty. Wrapping a blanket around herself, she knocked on the door opposite her own. ‘Penelope, are you awake?’

 


End file.
